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Credit issue header picture: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Ocean Moons, Promising Targets in Search for Life, Could Be Dead Inside

For more than two decades, scientists have wondered whether extraterrestrial life may be flourishing deep below the icy coatings boasted by moons in our outer solar system. Spacecraft like the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn have stumbled on evidence that some of their moons hide global oceans, warmed by the pull of the giant planet they orbit. And oceanic explorers much closer to home have discovered dynamic communities living in darkness around geologic features on the ocean floor. Combine the two and it’s easy to be carried away with dreams of alien seafloors teeming with microbes. But new research is looking deeper, into the rock itself, and suggesting that these worlds may be dead inside — not just biologically, but geologically as well.

Shutdown Grounds NASA’s Airborne Observatory

The ongoing partial government shutdown has grounded a NASA aircraft used for astronomical observations amid reviews about how to operate that program in the future. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a Boeing 747 with a 2.5-meter telescope mounted in its fuselage, has been unable able to perform any science flights since the shutdown started Dec. 22, project officials said during a town hall session about the program Jan. 8 during the 233rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) here.

Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway: NASA’s Proposed Lunar Space Station

The Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway is a proposed NASA program that would bring astronauts to the moon to operate a lunar space station. The concept has generated a wealth of research and numerous political discussions since 2017, especially because NASA’s stated goal under the Trump administration is to return to the moon before going to Mars.

Cotton Seed Sprouts on the Moon’s Far Side in Historic First by China’s Chang’e 4

Before China finished packing up its Chang’e 4 lunar lander to be blasted off on a never-before-accomplished journey to the far side of the moon, scientists slipped in a small tank holding plant seeds. And now, the team announced, a cotton seed has sprouted.

There Is Now Life On Two Worlds In Our Solar System

China Details Future Moon Plans, Including Polar Research Station

China’s bold moon-exploration plans don’t stop with the pioneering Chang’e 4 mission, which made the first-ever soft landing on the lunar far side on Jan. 2.

The State Council Information Office of China (SCIO) held a press conference Monday (Jan. 14) to discuss that epic touchdown, and to give an overview of the nation’s future activities on Earth’s nearest neighbor.

Hubble Space Telescope’s Glitchy Eye Should Clear Up Soon

The Hubble Space Telescope’s main eye on the universe should be back up and running soon. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) took itself offline last week as a safety precaution, after onboard software noticed anomalous voltage readings within the instrument. But Hubble team members have now determined that voltage levels actually remained within the normal range, ascribing the glitch to a telemetry issue rather than a power-supply problem.

Chang’e-4 Successfully Enters Lunar Orbit

China’s Chang’e-4 lunar mission, the first-ever soft-landing endeavor on the lunar farside, launched successfully on 8 December at 02:23 Beijing time (7 December at 18:23 UTC) via a Long March 3B rocket from Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The launch carried a lander and a rover toward the Moon. On 12 December at 8:45 Beijing time (16:45 UTC), the spacecraft arrived in lunar orbit, preparing for a landing in early January.

China Launches 1st Mission to Land on the Far Side of the Moon

The first-ever surface mission to the far side of the moon is underway. China’s robotic Chang’e 4 spacecraft streaked away from Earth today (Dec. 7), launching atop a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at about 1:23 p.m. EST (1823 GMT; 2:23 a.m. on Dec. 8 local China time). If all goes according to plan, Chang’e 4 will make history’s first landing on the lunar far side sometime in early January. The mission, which consists of a stationary lander and a rover, will perform a variety of science work and plant a flag for humanity in a region that remains largely unexplored to date.

For the first time, both astronaut Nick Hague and his wife are sharing dramatic details about a failed rocket launch in October. Hague was in a Soyuz rocket headed for the International Space Station when a violent booster failure forced them to abort the mission mid-flight, 31 miles above earth. „It was going perfect for the first two minutes,“ Hague told CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann. „And then all of a sudden there was this violent shaking side to side. … And the alarm’s going off. And I see a red light that’s lit up and it says that you’ve had an emergency with the booster.“

It’s time to say goodbye to one of the most storied explorers of our age: Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space, NASA announced today (Dec. 10).Voyager 2, which launched in 1977, has spent more four decades exploring our solar system, most famously becoming the only probe ever to study Neptune and Uranus during planetary flybys. Now, it has joined its predecessor Voyager 1 beyond the bounds of our sun’s influence, a milestone scientists weren’t able to precisely predict when would occur. And intriguingly, humanity’s second crossing doesn’t look precisely like data from the first journey out.

New Horizons – Ultima Thule

Ultima Thule in Sight! New Horizons Probe Snaps New Photo of Its Target

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has beamed home another glimpse of the distant, icy body it will zoom past just three weeks from now. The small object Ultima Thule swims amid a sea of distant stars in the new composite photo, which New Horizons snapped with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera at around midnight EST (0500 GMT) on Dec. 1.

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NASA Insight Mars Lander

NASA’s InSight Sends First Pictures

Touchdown on Mars! NASA’s InSight Lands to Peer Inside the Red Planet

NASA’s InSight lander touched down safely on the Martian surface today (Nov. 26), pulling off the first successful Red Planet landing since the Curiosity rover’s arrival in August 2012 — on the seventh anniversary of Curiosity’s launch, no less. Signals confirming InSight’s touchdown came down to Earth at 2:53 p.m. EST (1953 GMT), eliciting whoops of joy and relief from mission team members and NASA officials here at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the InSight mission. A few minutes later, the team received confirmation from the lander that it’s functioning after the landing. [NASA’s InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage]

An enhanced Long March 3B with a Yuanzheng-1 upper stage lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China at 2:07 p.m. Eastern Nov. 18 sending two Beidou satellites directly into medium Earth orbits at around 21,500 kilometers altitude. The launch was consistent with airspace closure notices issued Nov. 15, with amateur images and footage (link in Chinese) providing the first evidence of the activity.

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On 6 March 2018, the BepiColombo engineering model was delivered to ESA’s mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany.BepiColombo – ESA’s first mission to Mercury – is based on two spacecraft: the ESA-led Mercury Planetary Orbiter, with 11 experiments and instruments, and the Japanese sp…

The BepiColombo mission to Mercury passed a review milestone last week, confirming that it can leave Europe and begin preparations for launch at the Kourou spaceport.The spacecraft and ground equipment, along with personnel, will start transferring to Kourou towards the end of next month.…

„The only problem is, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had dismissed Swarm’s application for its experimental satellites a month earlier, on safety grounds. The FCC is responsible for regulating commercial satellites, including minimizing the chance of accidents in space. It feared that…

Engineers removed the combined optics and science instruments of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope from their shipping container in a high bay at Northrop Grumman on March 8, signaling the next step in the observatory’s integration and testing.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) declared Friday that it would start to make preparations for a new flagship X-ray space observatory for the research of black holes, neutron stars and quark stars.

​China’s latest lunar probe, the Chang’e-4, is expected to land on the far side of the Moon on the second half this year in what is to be the first soft landing on the dark side of the moon in the history of space flight.